19 to 21

No, that’s not the age that Joe Nuxhall was when he retired from baseball, it’s,

Baseball... Then and Now

Volume 5, #46, November 19, 2007

News Item: November 24, 1872 – Frederick Joseph Chapman is born in Little Cooley, Pennsylvania.

There are two ways of looking at the major league baseball career of the late Joe Nuxhall. On the one hand, it can be said that ill-fortune, or maybe bad timing, cost him a shot at pitching in the World Series. On the other hand, he has been very fortunate, because his pre-eminent claim to fame, the one fact about his major league career that every obituary mentioned following his passing late last week at the age of 79, isn’t true.

Although Nuxhall pitched for 16 years in the major leagues, and won a total of 135 games, you could almost assume that his career began and ended on June 10, 1944. Since that date, more than 63 years ago, Joe Nuxhall has been universally-known as “The Youngest Player in Major League History.”

A notable distinction for sure, though not one that should have so completely overshadowed the rest of his baseball career. A career that also included pitching in the majors from the 1952 season to the 1966 season, and an even longer stint afterwards as “the old left-hander” in the broadcast booth for “his” team, the Cincinnati Reds. (Nuxhall used to sign off after every game by saying, “this is the old left-hander, rounding third and heading for home.”) Generations of Reds fans knew Nuxhall, and, in almost every case, knew that he had made his major league debut at the age of 15 years, 10 months and 11 days during the severe manpower shortages caused by Word War II. It was a time when a one-armed outfielder played for the Browns and a one-legged pitcher appeared in a game for the Senators, along with various other 4Fs, youngsters (Carl Scheib, Tommy Brown, etc.) and oldsters (Babe Herman, Paul Waner, etc.) Oddly, the 1945 Browns of Pete Gray and the 1945 Senators of Bert Shepard were both decent teams – they finished third and second behind the pennant-winning Tigers. And the 1944 Reds were pretty good, too, finishing third. Everybody, not just the bad teams, were short of players.

Nuxhall, who had been pitching for his Hamilton, Ohio junior high school just a few weeks before, ended up facing Stan Musial and the rest of the soon-to-be World Champion St. Louis Cardinals that afternoon in Crosley Field, when manager Bill McKechnie sent him out to the mound late in a 11-0 Cards runaway. Understandably nervous, Nuxhall at least got a couple of outs as he faced the entire St. Louis batting order one time through… giving up five runs, two hits, walking five and throwing a wild pitch in his two-thirds of an inning and nine batters faced. McKechnie, hoping he could retire the side, left him in for all nine Cardinal batters before finally taking him out, and the game ended 18-0.

Although Nuxhall had a 67.50 ERA for his 1944 major league season, he did have the satisfaction of retiring two major league hitters while supposedly becoming the youngest player in major league history, apparently taking that distinction away from Scheib, who had debuted for the Philadelphia Athletics on September 6, 1943 at the age of 16 years, eight months and five days.

Well, that’s partly true. The youngest player prior to Nuxhall was a pitcher for the Philadelphia Athletics, but it wasn’t Carl Scheib and he didn’t pitch in the American League. And, when he made his major league debut, he was actually younger than Nuxhall, a good bit younger. More than a year younger. At the time of Nuxhall’s appearance against the Cards there was a 71 year-old man living in Western Pennsylvania who could have, if he had so wished, disputed Nuxhall’s claim as being the youngest major leaguer. He was Frederick Joseph Chapman, and he is the actually the holder of the title “The Youngest Major Leaguer.” Born in little Little Cooley, Pennsylvania (which is located in Crawford County, northeast of Meadville, in the northwest part of the state) on November 24, 1872, Fred Chapman was just short of 14 years and eight months old when he entered the pitcher’s box for the American Association Philadelphia Athletics on July 22, 1887. Do the math. He was born in November 1872, and played in a major league baseball game in July 1887, when he wasn’t even particularly close to his 15th birthday.

(Even more obscure than Chapman was Billy Geer. He held the “youngest” record prior to Chapman, having appeared in two games in the outfield in October 1874 for the New York Mutuals of the National Association at the age of 15 years and two months. Although he ended up playing in 232 major league games spread over six seasons in four leagues, it isn’t even known when and where he died.)

The 1887 season was a tough one for the Athletics and their manager/co-owner/general manager/business manager (he filled all those roles at one time of another, although Frank Bancroft and Charlie Mason are usually given credit for managing the ’87 Athletics) Bill Sharsig. His ace, Bobby Mathews, finally had his arm give out at the age of 35, following a 19-year career as a top pitcher (yes, he got his start in the National Association of Base Ball Players -- the NABBP -- in 1860 at the age of 17) and just over 300 wins (counting his time in the NABBP and the National Association). That left two, 20 year-olds, Gus Weyhing and Ed Seward, to carry almost the entire pitching load for the Athletics. And what a load it was, a combined 937 innings. As of July 22, either Weyhing or Seward had started every one of the previous 11 games. Al Atkinson, the team’s other pitcher, hadn’t gone to the box since July 6 and Mathews hadn’t pitched since June 13. Apparently, both Atkinson and Mathews were hors d’combat on July 22. With the last place Cleveland Spiders in town, Sharsig needed a pitcher after Seward defeated the Lake Eriers 6-1 on July 20. Through some connection (and he had a lot of them), Sharsig knew about the 5-8, 165 pound (big for a 19th Century 14 year old) Fred Chapman, who was, at that time, pitching in some capacity in the fine baseball town of Reading, Pennsylvania, some 40 miles from the Athletics’ Jefferson Street Grounds and completely on the other side of the state from Little Cooley.

And Chapman did indeed take the box for the 32-39 Athletics on July 22 against Mike Morrison and the Spiders in what turned out to be a strange game. Even stranger was Chapman’s pitching line… yes, even stranger than the one authored by Nuxhall some 57 years later.

There’s a box score line that Jayson Stark, the maven of odd box score lines, would love. How was it possible? The youngster was trailing 6-2 going into the sixth inning (the Athletics were batting first that day) when the Philadelphia team mounted a rally, scoring two runs and putting the best player in the AA, Harry Stovey, on third base with heavy-hitting Henry Larkin at the plate. Stovey, who at one time held both the single season and career home run records and who was credited with 74 stolen bases as well in 1887, for some reason attempted to steal home with less than two outs (and a superb hitter up). Umpire Mitchell (first name unknown) ruled that Larkin interfered with Cleveland catcher Pop Snyder on the play, calling the batter out. The Spiders argued, not unreasonably but a little too vociferously as it turned out, that Stovey should have been called out, instead of being allowed to return to third. While the matter was being discussed, Mitchell suddenly declared a forfeit for the home team. So, Chapman had pitched a complete, five inning game wherein his team was the winner, but didn’t get a decision because there is no winning pitcher in a forfeit. Imagine how that would have been covered on Sports Center, or in “Rumblings and Grumblings.”

And that was the story of Fred Chapman. The Athletics had the next two days off, after which Weyhing and Seward pitched the next seven games, and most of the remaining ones in 1887 as well, as the Athletics finished fifth with a 64-69 record. Chapman never appeared in another major league game, eventually dying in Union City, Pennsylvania (also in the western part of the state) on December 14, 1957 at the age of 85, in the middle of Joe Nuxhall’s extended major league career. As near as can be told, Chapman never pushed his claim as the youngest major leaguer, despite the publicity surrounding Nuxhall throughout his career. (Oddly enough, another Fred Chapman was an infielder for Connie Mack’s Athletics from 1939-1941.)

Maybe Nuxhall deserved that break. Although he did have a long and successful career with the Reds, he was virtually typecast as the youngest major leaguer. He was much more. First, he also appeared in a minor league game in 1944, apparently starting and pitching one inning for Birmingham in the Sally League. This time, he gave up one hit, five walks and six runs, and took the loss. After trying a few games in the International League (and getting bombed) in 1945, he found success with the Lima Beans of the Ohio State League later that same year, (Yes, he pitched in Lima, Ohio, and, no, I don’t really know what the team nickname was.) going 10-5 with a 2.57 ERA. Then, he retired in 1946, prior to his 18th birthday.

He came back to baseball in 1947, fought his way back up through the minors, and returned to the Reds in 1952 – eight years after his first appearance. And, he did have a pretty good career, winning 17 games in 1955 (and leading the NL in shutouts with five) and 15 in 1963, and making the All-Star team twice. He ended up 135-117 with a 3.90 ERA (101 ERA+).

Bad timing did prevent him from ever appearing in the World Series. Recall that the Reds played in the 1961 and 1970 World Series. Sadly, 1961 was the one year Nuxhall didn’t pitch for the Reds -- he’d been traded in January to the Athletics (the Kansas City version) for John Tsitouris and John Briggs. The Reds than got him back in June 1962 as a free agent, and he enjoyed five more years in Cincy (winning 46 games) before retiring at the age of 38, just prior to the opening of the 1967 season. If he could have lasted until 1970, he would have made the Series he missed in 1961. For Joe Nuxhall, as it was for Fred Chapman, timing was everything.

And speaking of timing… why did it take four years for the Feds to finally get around to indicting Barry Bonds? Anyone with half a mind could have figured out that Bonds was going to end up wearing a different kind of stripes after the publication of “Game of Shadows.” While it would have been asking too much for the government to move these things along prior to home run #756, baseball certainly could have seen this coming in plenty of time to stop Bonds from corrupting the most important record in sports. And that is the real tragedy of Barry Bonds.

-- John Shiffert